9781422274293

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What Is Pain? What is pain? It is easy to answer “something that hurts,” but that does not explain what pain really is. Everyone feels pain when they are hurt, but each person experiences pain in different ways. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “the unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.” Medical writer Adam Felman goes a little further in trying to explain the purpose of pain. “Pain is an unpleasant sensation and emotional experience linked to tissue damage. Its purpose is to allow the body to react and prevent further tissue damage,” he wrote in Medical News Today . “We feel pain when a signal is sent through nerve fibers to the brain for interpretation. The experience of pain is different for everyone, and there are different ways of feeling and describing pain. This can make it difficult to define and treat.

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What Is Pain?